[PJMedia] Before 9/11, how many Americans knew the meaning of the word jihad? Even now, twenty-five years later, how many Americans grasp that acts like the destruction of the Twin Towers, the Orlando Pulse club massacre, and the Boston Marathon bombing are, in fact, not the work of people who’ve hijacked or misunderstand Islam but, rather, of people who understand the dictates of the Koran perfectly and are determined to carry them out. Some of us have spent much of the last quarter-century trying to communicate to serious readers that Islam isn’t just another religion but, on the contrary, an ideology of conquest.
Any number of invaluable books, like Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad and The History of Jihad and Jamie Glazov’s Jihadist Psychopath, have stressed the centrality of jihad to the Islamic faith, have demonstrated the roots of jihad in Islamic scripture, have traced it back to the very founding of Islam, have elucidated its psychology, and have made it clear that jihad can take a variety of forms, with acts of terrorism being only one of them. But never before, so far as I’m aware, has any writer on the subject constructed such an elaborate taxonomy of jihad as has Aynaz Anni Cyrus in her captivating new book The Architecture of Jihad: Inside the Ideology, Law, and Global Strategy Driving Islam’s Multi-Front Expansion.
Cyrus, let it be said at the outset, is an elegant, no-nonsense scribe: short, succinct sentences, brief bullet points, snappy formulations, no shilly-shallying around, and not a trace of academic fustiness. Her constant aim is to convey every piece of vital information as clearly, crisply, and urgently as possible. And one of the first things we need to know is that all forms of jihad “are part of an integrated playbook: normalize, enshrine, educate, entrench.” She begins with the most familiar form – “combat jihad.” Combat is central to Islam; wherever there’s a genuinely Islamic government, violence is one of its key tools. Violence was indispensable in the quick early expansion of Muhammad’s empire far beyond the Arabian peninsula; in the religion’s first centuries, “[c]onquest evolved into a system.” And combat jihad, in the age of 9/11, Atocha, Bataclan, and the Manchester Arena, is alive and well.
The list:
- financial jihad, including war spoils and the taxes levied on dhimmis: jizya and kharaj (on dhimmi-owned farmland)
- migration jihad or hijrah
- deception jihad
- political jihad
- missionary jihad or dawa
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All of the above-mentioned forms of jihad have long histories. Not so “civilization jihad,” which involves the gradual transformation of an infidel society – morally, culturally, politically, and institutionally – “until the population no longer remembers where the original lines were drawn.” Let me explain: older non-Muslims, such as myself, who never saw a hijab in our youth, have since seen them proliferate, and therefore are intensely aware of how dramatically the West has changed; but young Western people around us have never known a world without hijabs, and are therefore far less capable of being worked up about them.
This kind of jihad, writes Cyrus, “thrives today for one reason: the modern West created the perfect environment for it”: once, “societies were fortified, identities were cohesive, and cultural boundaries were rigid”; now, “tolerance, diversity, inclusion, religious neutrality, and personal autonomy” make Islamic subversion easy. Confronted with Islamic cultural phenomena like hijabs, Western institutions “bend first out of politeness, then out of policy, and eventually out of fear of legal or social consequences.” So it is that while Islam used to conquer a society first and restructure it afterwards, today “restructuring comes first,” as exemplified by the introduction of halal-only menus in British hospitals and prisons, the removal of alcohol and pork from grocery stores in certain French and Belgian areas, and the creation of high-fashion hijabs by Nike and H&M (thereby “reframing a Sharia requirement as an empowerment symbol”).
“Civilization jihad” is particularly effective, observes Cyrus,
…because it does not demand surrender all at once. It asks for one accommodation, one exemption, one cultural adjustment at a time. By the time the pattern becomes visible, the norms of the host society have already shifted, and the original culture is treated as outdated, insensitive, or dangerous to social harmony.
Cyrus discusses other forms of current-day jihad, whose names speak largely for themselves. “Propaganda jihad,” which was perfected by the Muslim Brotherhood and which “has become the most aggressive and visible front in the 21st century,” controls perceptions of Islam by turning “lies into leverage, emotion into obedience, and confusion into compliance.” (One of its great accomplishments is the coinage of the word “Islamophobia.”) “Lawfare jihad” exploits Western law to weaken Western defenses. And “betrayal jihad” is unique in that it’s committed not by Muslims but by infidels. It’s “the jihad of useful allies, fearful officials, transactional leaders, guilt-driven activists, confused voters, and governments that reshape their own civilization to appease those who seek its decline. Civilization Jihad softened the ground. Propaganda Jihad shaped the narrative. Migration and Political Jihad built the leverage. Lawfare Jihad enforced the structure. Betrayal Jihad activates when those structures meet a population too intimidated to defend itself.” Cyrus sums up betrayal jihad succinctly: “when a civilization loses confidence, its people will protect the force they fear instead of the culture they inherit.”
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